Candidate Bio:
Debra Cerda has 18 years of experience in data acquisition, analysis,
and management as well as project management and RDBMS development in
both private and government sectors. Debra has served as the Director
of Sales and Business Development for Blue Treble Solutions, which
supports clients needs with PostgreSQL data architecture, management,
and optimization. Debra recently joined 2nd Quadrant, as the Practice
Manager for the U.S.

Debra is an open source and PostgreSQL advocate, and has volunteered
at PGOpen as well as PGConf US 2016. She is also a co-organizer of the
Austin PostgreSQL Users Group, the 2016 PG Day Austin, and PGConf US
2017. She helped secure and represent the PostgreSQL community at other
events including the last two years at Texas Linux Fest and OSCON Austin

Candidate Platform:
I have long had a commitment to open source, having been involved by supporting codeathons and educational events in the open source community in Austin for over ten years. While I haven’t made code contributions, I do contribute regularly to the PostgreSQL community through advocacy and volunteerism as referenced in my bio.

I have extensive experience serving on boards of non-profit organizations, including local, state, and national. Several of these positions have provided skills and experience that I can apply towards a board position with the U.S. PostgreSQL Association.

· As director for Black Star Co-op, the world’s first co-operatively owned and worker-managed brewpub, I contributed to the startup and growth of our co-op by recruiting new member-owners. As chair of the Leadership Development committee, I routinely developed and delivered board training.

· As a member of the Governing Committee for the American Homebrewers Association, I’ve supported and led the formation of the Diversity Subcommittee, dedicated to meeting the diverse needs and increasing the strength of the AHA’s membership for over forty thousand members. We strive to foster an inclusive environment, to include more people from various under-represented sectors -- gender, ethnicity, generational, geographic, and more.

A priority in any board membership role is to solicit feedback and address concerns from membership. As the U.S. PostgreSQL Association grows, we should continuously evaluate challenges, opportunities and changes, while improving communication to build a more robust organization.

I have the will and determination to contribute to the growth and health of the PostgreSQL community, and have the support of my employer. I can devote time to this role to make it a success.

In conclusion, as a candidate for your U.S. PostgreSQL Association board, I am committed to:

· Promote PostgreSQL as an open source database platform to more users and developers as well to other relevant open source communities

· Foster diversity and inclusiveness in our organization

· Drive improved organizational processes within our organization

· Improve communication with our membership

Thank you for your consideration.

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Candidate Name: Joe Conway

Candidate Bio:
Contributions as follows (since roughly the year 2000)

Code
* Implemented set-returning (a.k.a. table) functions.
* Significantly improved bytea and array data types, including adding
support for btree indexes.
* Added support for polymorphic argument types.
* Developed multi-row VALUES list capability.
* Wrote several "contrib"​ libraries including "dblink"​ and "tablefunc"
​ (connectby() and crosstab()).
* Improved and consolidated several "contrib" libraries into the
“fuzzystringmatch” library.
* Created the pg_settings system catalog VIEW and related support
functions.
* Coded the original has_*_privilege functions.
* Added shared_preload_libraries configuration parameter and related
functionality.
* Wrote pg_config system view and related functions
* Exposed pg_controldata via a series of 4 functions
* Coded generate_series()
* Many other miscellaneous features and bug fixes.
* Author and maintainer of a PostgreSQL procedural language handler for
the R language, PL/R.

Community
* Member of the PostgreSQL project infrastructure sysadmin team
* Committer: push access to the PostgreSQL project main git repository
* Moderator for pgsql-bugs and pgsql-novice

Conferences
* Member Program committee Postgres Open for past 2 years
* Primary organizer for the Postgres event at SCaLE for past 5 or 6
(or 7?) years (as of 2015 a two day event, and as of 2016 a two track
two day event)
* Member of Program committee for Regulated industry summit 2016
* Member of Program committee for Regulated industry summit and
PGConf.US for 2017
* Speaker at many events

Candidate Platform:
According to its website, The US PostgreSQL Association is a non profit
public charity with the following purpose:

(a) ﻿Educate, promote and support the creation, development and use of
the PostgreSQL Open Source Database software, a software system which is
available to the general public without charge;
(b) Provide information and education regarding the use of PostgreSQL; and
(c) Organize, hold and conduct meetings, discussion, and forums on the
contemporary issues concerning the use of PostgreSQL.

As a PostgreSQL committer, member of the PostgreSQL infrastructure team,
the organizer of San Diego PostgreSQL Users Group and PostgreSQL@SCaLE,
committee member for Postgres Open, the Regulated Industry Summit, and
PGConf US, as well as a speaker and volunteer at numerous conferences, I
have lived those words.

As a board member I will bring my experience with these educational
events, and with developing Postgres itself, using Postgres, and helping
others use Postgres successfully as a consultant, to bear. I will
continue to advocate for, and promote the use of, PostgreSQL with the
same energy and zeal that I have applied for over 16 years.

Thank you!

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Candidate Name: Joshua D. Drake

Candidate Bio:

Candidate Platform:
As a founder and long term Director of United States PostgreSQL it has been a pleasure working with the varied members of the board. I look forward to working with the newly elected board to continue our mission of bringing PostgreSQL education and visibility to the United States community.

I not only helped create United States PostgreSQL, I was the architect of several of our key services to the community including but not limited to:

..* Associated User Group Framework
....* Providing non-profit status to many of our popular user groups including NYCPUG and AustinPUG.

..* Shepherding the inclusion of PgConf US
....* Providing non-profit support to the largest PostgreSQL conference in the United States

If elected, I do not intend to run as an officer but I do plan on continuing to push forward an agenda for PostgreSQL. I would
like to see the following:

..* Associated Project Framework (I have already begun work with the current board on this service)
....* To allow other community projects to receive PgUS support

..* Proper corporate support framework
....* That does not dissuade small businesses from participating
....* Reduce the burden of corporate sponsors supporting multiple projects

..* An increase in smaller events such as the upcoming Austin PgDay

..* Increased member participation

..* An increase in education delivery such as live free support sessions and presentations

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Candidate Name: Stephen Frost

Candidate Bio:
I, Stephen Frost, am interested in running for the United States
PostgreSQL Association Board.

I have been involved with PostgreSQL for nearly 15 years and have
contributed to PostgreSQL and the community in many different ways:

- PostgreSQL Major Contributor and Committer

- Member of the PostgreSQL Infrastructure team

- On the PostgresOpen conference committee since 2014

- Committee Chair of PostgresOpen 2015 and PostgresOpen 2016

- Successfully worked with sponsors and the PostgresOpen Committee to
make PostgresOpen a destination conference for hundreds while managing
expenses to ensure continuation of the conference. Since I have been
involved, PostgresOpen has been financially net positive every year,
with sufficient funds to bootstrap the following year's conference.

- Trainer and speaker at numerous conferences around the world,
interacting with PostgreSQL users of many different backgrounds.

Candidate Platform:
PostgreSQL.US is chartered to educate, promote, and support the
creation, development and use of PostgreSQL, and further to provide
information and education regarding PostgreSQL and to organize, hold and
conduct meetings on the contemporary issues concerning the use of
PostgreSQL.

To further that effort, I would continue to work with the major US
PostgreSQL conference organizers to ensure those events are successful
and well run, to allow their continued operation and expansion, and to
continue to connect with the local PostgreSQL User Groups (PUGs) to
broaden the PostgreSQL community through education and promotion.

Further, to ensure that our organization continues to operate smoothly,
working towards our charter and with timely votes and appropriate care
given to the members of PostgreSQL.US, and as a member of the PostgreSQL
infrastructure team, I would work to improve PostgreSQL.US's systems and
processes to make sure that our membership is taken care of and that our
organization is able to focus on our charter to provide education for
and promotion of our favorite open source database, PostgreSQL.

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Candidate Name: Scott Mead

Candidate Bio:
I've been working in, on and around PostgreSQL for about 11 years now.

* I was the original developer behind the EDB-provided open-source installers and binaries given freely to the postgresql community as well as the architect of BigSQL's free distributions of postgresql.

* I have been speaking at PostgreSQL conferences for the last 7 or 8 years

* I've contributed to the -admin and -general lists for quite some time

* I work closely with clients in order to get them involved in the community whether through code, conference sponsorship, talks, etc..

* As a BigSQL architect, I push hard to ensure that we provide community friendly tools that integrate the big-data and postgresql ecosystem, we try to include and simplify many things and provide it purely free and open-source to the community and its user base.

Candidate Platform:
I'm very excited about the opportunity to even further my contribution to the community. I've been able to make a career out of PostgreSQL, it's not my job, it's my life. I love that what I work on can be made freely available and that I have the opportunity to serve the community as a board member of the US organization.

Candidate Bio:
Christophe Pettus is Chief Executive Officer of PostgreSQL Experts, Inc. He's been working with PostgreSQL since version 7.1. He also serves on the board of the Django Software Foundation.

Candidate Platform:
As a long-time PostgreSQL DBA and consultant, and CEO of PostgreSQL Experts, Inc., I'm looking forward to giving back to the community. I also serve as treasurer of the Django Software Foundation, and thus have experience with the operation of and issues facing software not-for-profit organizations.